Fairytale Poster Boy
by Omnicat
Summary: In a few months time, Heero will be a father telling his newborn bedtime stories. Too bad fairytales leave such a bad taste in his mouth.


**Title:** Fairytale Poster Boy

**Author:** Omnicat

**Unofficially Adapted From:** _Gundam Wing_, with references to _Throw Momma from the Train_, _Baccano!_, and _Snakes on a Plane_

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** All of the above.

**Warnings:** Um, spawn?

**Characters & Pairings:** Heero x Relena

**Summary:** In a few months time, Heero will be a father telling his newborn bedtime stories. Too bad fairytales leave such a bad taste in his mouth.

**Author's Note:** Enjoy!

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**Fairytale Poster Boy**

"Okay. See those girls over there?"

"The ones with the train set?"

"Yep. Run with it."

"Trains."

"Yes."

"Hm."

Heero leaned back and let his gaze drift along with his thoughts. The park was full of people enjoying the scent of budding spring on their day off. The two girls who had been riding their toy trains off the slide were soon chased away by other children; parents kept half an eye on the antics of their brood while they mingled among themselves.

Relena's head rested on Heero's shoulder and one of her hands on her round belly.

Trains.

It wasn't that he couldn't come up with something about trains right then and there. There was nothing wrong with his imagination. But part of him didn't _want_ to.

"If you can't think of anything new, just recite an old one," Relena murmured after a while.

He turned his head to press his nose into her hair. "Once upon a time, there was a train full of Leos and a group of gundams who -"

"Let's leave the history lessons until later, hm?" she interrupted, tickling around in search of his belly button.

He smirked and caught her wandering hand. "Duo once showed me a pre-colony movie about two guys who make a pact to throw each other's wife and mother off a train."

Her fingers twined through his as she chuckled. "That's one name stricken from the list of potential babysitters."

Silence fell between them, if not around them. In the best way possible, today was not a peaceful day. They were surrounded on all sides by the sounds of people - their people; happy people without a care in the world. Rollerskaters whooshed by in front of them and another pair of lovers was kissing audibly on the bench set back to back to theirs. The sense that this was Relena's and his doing - that the liveliness and enjoyment and lack of _fear_ in these people was their responsibility - was stronger than usual, but it still paled compared to the _knowledge_ that soon...

He'd be a father soon.

He would have thought that after more or less singlehandedly shouldering an unappreciated but vitally important cause during the war and more than ten years of helping Relena run the world, he would have a little less trouble accepting responsibility over one little life.

At some point, Relena looked up, asking for his next try with her eyes.

"I hate fairytales," he admitted, trying to sound flippant.

Apparently it worked.

"Don't be like that," Relena said teasingly, like she'd caught him sulking. "Child-friendly takes effort, even for me, trust me."

"I don't like them," he insisted, more serious now, staring into the bushes, away from her. "Never have."

But when he felt her moving away, he clasped her hand more tightly and pressed his cheek to her hair, looking down on their hands and her belly through his eyelashes.

He really needed to get a grip and stop feeling so overwhelmed.

She squeezed back, voice soft. "Why?"

Already regretting giving her an opening, he shrugged. It wasn't something he'd ever had to or tried to put into words before, so instead he deflected with: "You do realise that in pre-colony times, bedtime stories used to be gruesome tales of warning to keep children on the straight and narrow?"

"Pre-space age entirely, I think," she said matter-of-factly, pretending to go along with him even though she knew he knew she wouldn't let him escape by changing the subject. "Even pre-electricity, probably. But the current kind has been around for a while. Times changed."

"They can change again."

"Something hardly worth overthinking, let alone base your life around."

Now her voice was firm, almost admonishing. She drew away more insistently. He knew that the smile that came over her the moment their eyes met wasn't meant to soften her words - Relena Darlian would be offended by the mere implication of toning herself down - and despite all the efforts of his gut feeling of doom and gloom, Heero felt himself soften, just a bit.

"Let me rephrase:" she said. "times have changed over and over, but our happy, glitter-coated fairytales did not regress back to their gory roots. Positive thinking prevailed, and the world was all the better for it."

"You think so?"

"Positive thinking, Heero. It's what makes the world go round."

She smiled in a way that never failed to make his stomach melt and his heart ache. Because it seemed to say that what she really meant was, _'love_ makes the world go round, and look at who I'm giving all that love to', and the reminder of how much _he_ loved _her_ was so fierce it hurt.

He'd never gotten used to that. He didn't think he ever would. Sometimes he still caught himself wondering if he wasn't merely fooling himself into thinking he was capable of something like _'love'_.

Sometimes he wondered if anyone was - aside from Relena. Sometimes all of it, down to the very premise of it, just seemed too good to be true.

Just like those damn fairytales.

"You don't think it's cruel to raise children's hopes?" he asked, unable to hold back any longer nor caring how deep the well was from which this truth sprung. "Showing them visions of magical worlds and golden futures while the world around them..."

He trailed off - and looked her way.

"If they're hopes worth rising up to, I can't see it as a bad thing," was Relena's answer. "I want our children to grow up dreaming, Heero."

"_Child,_" he said before he knew what he was saying. "Let's stick to the one for now."

"I meant that metaphorically."

There was a note of defensiveness, of vulnerability in her voice, fleeting but glaring, that reflected back to him like a piece of gravel to the face. He hadn't meant to make her think...

"Sorry," he mumbled.

But she shook her head, cupped his cheek and kissed him so tenderly he had to remind himself that kissing back wouldn't leave a bruise. Then she grinned. "Just face it, you're a fairytale poster boy. Brave knight turned handsome prince, to be promoted to king in a few more months."

It _was_ too good to be true. But on the other hand, there was no denying the truth of it. The one thing he knew for sure was that he didn't have it in him to make up something like Relena. Nor would he ever be able to fool himself into seeing her as something other than her true self. If he stopped to _really_ think about it, doubting any of the good she had brought into his life - peace, herself, the little life that entranced him as much as it terrified him - made no sense. None at all.

Relaxing, he smirked.

"Not much of a poster boy without the kingdom," he pointed out.

"It's the princess that counts," she countered.

"Not much of a princess without the kingdom."

"Now you go too far, princeling. Don't make me demote you to a duke."

"Yes, your highness." He paused. "Snakes."

"What?"

"A habitat full of deadly snakes is compromised, releasing all the snakes into the train."

Startled, she laughed so hard she doubled over. "No!"

"Oh, I remember another one. A story about a group of immortals, a group of mobsters, another group of criminals, and what happened when they all got onto a train haunted by a monster called the Rail Tracer."

"You're doing this on purpose," she said in an accusing tone as she wiped away tears of mirth.

"It has my DNA. It'll be genetically predisposed to appreciate my sense of humor."

Sighing contentedly, she stretched out against him again, one hand on her belly and the other linked with his. "How will I survive? You'll be the death of me after all."


End file.
